I'm not sure if I like what they did with Song of the Ancients, as the original ~ Fate ~ version was my favorite, but the others are nice. I especially like the Snow in Summer and Kaine arrangements. I'll be looking into this; it seems a lot less, hmm, "ethnic" I suppose the word would be, than the original.

still waiting for mine to arrive in the mail. Amazing that I had separate standing orders for SD Box and Nier album, they both are released on the *same day* -- I get SD Box overnight, Nier still isn't here.

I guess it's because larger packages that you are forced to pay big bucks for, are automatically given primo treatment.

still waiting for mine to arrive in the mail. Amazing that I had separate standing orders for SD Box and Nier album, they both are released on the *same day* -- I get SD Box overnight, Nier still isn't here.

I guess it's because larger packages that you are forced to pay big bucks for, are automatically given primo treatment.

As for NieR -echo- ~~ I'm about halfway through listening to it right now. And while I still believe nothing can trump the OST, this is *far* better than 15 Nightmares / Arranged. It's basically a big dubstep party with a few exceptions. It's fun, it makes far better use of Emi Evans' vocal tracks, and I'm just really really digging it.

EDIT - listened to the whole album like 5 times now (same goes for SQ Chips). I love both albums ridiculously mucho much. This was a great double purchase.

I hope SE makes like, an SQ Chips series. Drop the other "____ SQ" albums and just go nuts on chiptunes.

I just listened to two previews: KianÚ and SotA. To be honest... I'm not impressed, at all. I just have been spending the last day working on a cover of KianÚ with my girlfriend (who's wanted to do some of these for a while, being a linguist, and wanting to tackle some artificial language lyrics). The one thing that really MAKES the original, IMO, is the simplicity.

People who have been around long enough to know my taste in music know that "simplicity" is not commonly one of my most sought-after traits, but at least I know when it is important. Nier's music is lush but very clear and focused: every note counts. These covers just seem to miss the whole point of the originals (as far as I've heard).

I'm all for doing "out-there" covers (hell, I once reworked an early 90s arcade game's music into a 10 minute, Russian romantic piano concerto), but you've gotta build on something that the original is evoking. And I'm just not feeling it here.

But then again, I've only listened to KianÚ and SotA, so there may be many that are wonderful.

Margaret, my girlfriend finished transcribing Kaine into IPA a few days ago, and we've been working on a piano/vocal arrangement. She herself has constructed a number of artificial languages, and we've done a few songs in them, so doing Nier covers makes quite a bit of sense. One of them, "Bve Pfa Ri" (Rilin Song), plays as the background music on our website:

I'll have the mics setup this weekend, so I might get a good demo of Kaine up next week. We'll probably perform it this weekend at the tea house where we often perform and test out new material. Margaret has a more traditional operatic style than Emi (who tends to sing more straight toned), so the sound is a bit different, but it's been wonderful all the same. Our first album, "Channelwood" is finished and ready to go to master. We did "Still Alive" as a cover on this album, so it might be appropriate to do a Nier cover for the next.

I've tossed around the idea to Margaret to extrapolate on the phonetic construct of Kaine (which is gallic in origin), and write some other songs in it. Since she speaks Welsh and is also very familliar with gallic phonology, it wouldn't be difficult. But I think she's more interested in working in her own languages than extrapolating existing ones.